


A Fighting Chance

by StarlingGirl



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, Flirting, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21617422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/pseuds/StarlingGirl
Summary: Alexander works himself into a hospital bed.*“You awake under there? I need to take your vitals.”“Fight me,” Alex grumbles, only burrowing himself deeper and dragging a pillow directly on top of himself. There’s a laugh from somewhere outside of his cocoon. It’s a nice laugh, mellow and slow. Alex’s mind, still meandering somewhat feverishly, conjures up pictures of honey, of warm sunlight, of a low and lazy river.“Maybe later.”
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens
Comments: 19
Kudos: 284





	A Fighting Chance

**Author's Note:**

> More Hamilton/Laurens trash from my NaNo adventures. This time inspired by [this tumblr post.](https://turtletotem.tumblr.com/post/121393741711/ohsebs-ohsebs-ohsebs-my-nurse-just-came)
> 
> I don't know how hospitals work; allow me my romantic misconceptions.

It’s a slow, groggy journey back to coherent thought.

Alex wakes slowly and in stages. First, he becomes aware of a dull ache through every muscle of his body, a strange looseness in his joints that mutates into a vicious twinge when he flexes his fingers, his toes. Then he becomes aware that he’s cold—that despite the blankets piled on top of him, he’s shivering and shuddering, unable to stop his teeth from chattering and grinding against each other. Finally, he realises just how thirsty he is.

Opening his eyes is a mistake. They’re dry and gritty, and the very action seems to have introduced a nauseating headache into the mix. He lifts a hand to rub at his eyes, to try and massage his headache away, and finds that the effort required is enormous.

 _Did I finish my article?_ , he wonders absently. The answer escapes him, his recent memories slippery and elusive. The harder he tries to grasp at them, the further they seem to recede, like a shoal of little silver fish that startle and scatter at the slightest movement.

In the face of all these hardships, he does the only thing that he can: he falls back asleep.

When he wakes again, it’s with a slightly clearer idea of who and where he is. He remembers feeling unwell while he was working, dragging himself and his laptop to bed in a continued effort to meet his deadlines. He remembers the exhaustion, the rattling cough that he’d been fighting for weeks gathering in his chest and spearing his lungs with sharp pain when it shook itself loose. He remembers the sudden fear when his woozy thoughts finally made a connection.

(Twelve years old and shivering in his mother’s arms, both of them soaked with sweat; the way that she’d grown colder and he’d grown hotter, as though he’d been leaching life from her even as he grew sicker.)

He remembers the panic, hearing his own reedy voice down the phone. After that, he draws a blank until the vague memory of his last resurface to consciousness.

After a long ten minutes lying there, trying to reassure himself that he’s not dead, that he’s in a hospital and that they’re helping him, _fixing him,_ that this isn’t yellow fever and he’s got nobody left to lose—he manages to struggle himself to sitting. There’s a pitcher of water by his bedside, and he ever-so-carefully pours himself some into a plastic cup with shaking hands. He spills some across the table, mutters a hoarse profanity under his breath.

It’s like ambrosia, the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted. Wanting nothing more than to gulp it down and pour more, to wash the taste of sickness from his mouth and flush the clinging remnants of fever from his bones, he clutches the cup with both hands and sips slowly. He knows better.

Half a cup proves to be almost too much for him, anyway, even though he drinks it slowly. His stomach starts to churn and gurgle, nausea rising faintly at the back of his throat. He sets the cup down, pushes it away, and curls himself up once more. He’s still cold, still shivering—whether from the fever or the memories that have been stirred up, he’s not sure. He pulls the blankets and pillows around himself, burrowing as deep as he can down into them.

Some time later—what might have been a few hours or a few minutes; it’s difficult to tell while he’s floating in the untethered space of exhaustion and fever and fatigue—he hears someone bustling into his room. There’s a pause, and then a warmly amused voice.

“You awake under there? I need to take your vitals.”

“Fight me,” Alex grumbles, only burrowing himself deeper and dragging a pillow directly on top of himself. There’s a laugh from somewhere outside of his cocoon. It’s a nice laugh, mellow and slow. Alex’s mind, still meandering somewhat feverishly, conjures up pictures of honey, of warm sunlight, of a low and lazy river.

“Maybe later,” the voice says, and then Alex’s pillows begin to shift. He blinks against the light when his face is uncovered, peering up at the man looking down at him. His scrubs are a grey-green that probably wasn’t intended to suit anybody as well as it does him. Alex squints upwards in fascination to examine the similarity between the garments and the colour of the man’s eyes, which are sparkling down at him. His curly hair is pulled back, his face generously sprinkled with freckles.

“Hello,” Alex says.

“Hi, Alexander,” the nurse returns. “How are you feeling?”

“Too small,” Alex says, and then frowns as some distant part of him realises this might not be a helpful answer. “For my body?” he elaborates.

A cool hand sweeps his hair back from his forehead, paired with a thoughtful noise that seems to indicate that Alex’s words make real sense. He relaxes a little. “Cold?” the nurse asks, and Alex nods, shivers once for effect, and worms his way back into his blankets.

With a chuckle, the nurse slips a digital thermometer from his pocket, effortlessly stripping the plastic casing from the disposable tip with one hand and sliding it on. “Hold still for a second,” he asks Alex, and Alex dutifully stops wriggling around in an attempt to make himself comfortable; waits for the beep a few seconds later and immediately resumes his attempts to find the perfect, warm spot under the blankets.

“What’s your name?” Alex asks curiously, hears the drowsiness in his own voice.

“I’m John. Can I have your hand?” Alex reluctantly slips his hand from under the covers, sighs happily when the fingers that settle at his wrist are warm. There’s a minute of quiet as John takes his pulse, carefully tucking Alexander’s arm under the covers when he’s done and hoisting them up a little. Alex makes a pleased little noise.

John makes a few notes on the chart at the bottom of Alex’s bed.

“Good news is that your fever is almost gone,” John tells him. “Bad news is that you got yourself into a hell of a state to land yourself here. How long have you had the cough?”

Alex considers, trying to push back through his thoughts and finding them strangely resistant. It’s only been a short conversation but he finds that he’s wrung out by it, exhausted. “Dunno. Month or two? ‘S just a cough.”

“Actually, now it’s pneumonia.”

“Oh,” Alex says.

“You need to look after yourself more,” John says, a slightly reproving tone tucked at the tail end of his words. Alex blinks sleepily.

“Too busy,” he says. “Need reminding sometimes.”

He can feel sleep plucking at the corners of his consciousness once more. A cough batters its way through his lungs, sets up a cold and heavy aching in them, like he can feel fluid building in there, stealing the heat from him. John says something, but Alex doesn’t hear, rasping breaths paired with fluttering eyes. He sleeps.

Wakefulness comes and goes, paired with a creeping lethargy and a bone-rattling cough that feels like it’s shaking him loose entirely, like at any moment he’ll crumble and fall apart. By the end of the day he feels no better but no worse, bad enough that he knows there’s no way he’ll be allowed to leave the hospital, good enough that his fingers itch to be working. There’s nothing in his room that might keep him occupied—no books, no notebooks, no laptop, _no phone._ He feels like a limb has been cut off.

When he dozes, he dreams that his unwritten words gather in the hollows of his lungs, clogging and cloying them, that they jumble around when he coughs and get tangled and caught, choke him just as surely as the fluid there.

John comes again in the evening. He’s got a hoodie on and a bag slung over his shoulder, clearly no longer on shift; he’s also got a thin plastic bag from the hospital shop in one hand that he sets on the end of Alex’s bed.

“What’s this?” Alex asks, frown on his face.

“You were complaining _a lot_ ,” John says, and tips the bag up from the end to let a notepad and a packet of pens spill out onto the bed, as well as something that looks like it might be a puzzle book. Alex blinks. He doesn’t remember complaining _out loud_ , wonders for a second if John can read his mind.

“Thanks,” he says, surprised.

“If it shuts you up for five minutes,” John says, but he’s laughing and there’s no real heat to it. “I think you’re the chattiest patient I’ve ever had here.” Alex isn’t sure whether to be proud or offended. John pours him a cup of water, tells him to get plenty of rest, and disappears off.

Alex immediately flips the pad open. He struggles with the packet of pens, wishes that John had stayed long enough to pull the packet open for him, and resorts to tearing at it with his teeth until he can get one free.

He quickly discovers that writing is _tiring_ when you’re as ill as he is. His hand aches and cramps, his focus wanes. The words in his head get lost somewhere on their way to the paper, and every line is laborious. It’s less than two pages before he gives up altogether, flings the pen across the room in frustration.

After a moment of sulking, he sighs and retrieves another pen from the pack.

He opens the puzzle book at a random page and starts a crossword. That proves to be just as frustrating, answers eluding him, and he flips a few pages until his finds a word search, and starts idly searching for words, marking them off half-heartedly with wobbly strokes of the pen.

It’s not much, but at least it’s something; enough to keep his hands busy as he scans the rows of nonsensical letters all piled together. He’s not even halfway to finishing before he feels himself dropping off again, pushes the book and the pen to one side, and pulls his covers up over his head.

“Morning, sunshine.”

Alex groans, garbles something that might be English if you squint at it sideways.

“Fight me,” he repeats, recognising John’s voice—but the demand catches in his throat, and all at once he’s hacking and coughing hard enough to make his stomach ache and his eyes water, not quite able to draw breath before he’s coughing again. Broad hands help him to sit upright, one curled at the back of his neck to support him there and another rubbing a soothing pattern against his back.

His coughs peter out, leave him gasping.

“I’m not gonna fight you,” John says, making sure that Alexander is okay before his hands pull back. Alex misses them almost at once, head tipping back to chase the heat of them. “I know you’d win.”

“Damn right,” Alex says, hoarsely, even though John is taller than him, broader than him, looks like he eats meals more than once a day and remembers to sleep more than three or four hours a night, and definitely doesn’t contract pneumonia with the slightest provocation.

John gives him some pills and Alex takes them, draining his cup of water and sucking in a deep breath at the end of it, feeling the way that it scratches against his throat.

“When do I get to leave, anyway?” he asks.

“You mean you don’t want to hang out with me?” John asks, picking up the pen that’s lying by the wall and raising a questioning eyebrow at him before setting it back on the bedside table. He turns the notepad towards himself with a finger, glances over the messy handwriting scrawled across it that’s barely decipherable to anyone except Alexander. “I’m offended.”

“I don’t want to hang out with pneumonia,” Alex mutters. “And anyway, I’m busy.”

“Busy doing what?” John asks. He’s unhooked Alex’s chart and his holding it, the bottom balanced against one hip, without looking down at it. Alex wonders what he needs it for. Wonders if it’s just an excuse for a few minutes respite from his rounds.

“I’m the Finance Editor for the Financial Times,” he says, and then seems to realise something for the first time. “Oh, fuck. They probably think I’m dead. Oh, _fuck._ ” It’s like some disparate pieces of his mind have been floating around, untethered from reality, remaining in that strange incoherent state brought on by his ever. The real world snaps back like an elastic band, and he starts to panic as he realises just how long he’s been out of work.

He throws back the blankets on his bed as if he’s ready to push out of bed and run down to his office, _right now_. He’s stopped by John in front of him, hemming him back into the bed.

“Maybe start with a phone call,” he says, sympathetic but stern.

“I don’t have my phone,” Alex says. “I don’t know where it is? I don’t—necessarily remember getting here.” John slips his own phone from his pocket, unlocks it and pushes it into Alex’s hand.

“Here. I’ve got to go check on a couple other patients, I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t even think about leaving.”

Alex dials his office and picks at a loose thread on his blanket as he listens to it ring.

“Washington.” His boss answers the phone in a much more brusque manner than if he had recognised Alex’s own number calling. For a moment, he’s thrown off.

“Uh, it’s me, Sir. Alex.” The change is immediate.

“Alexander! It’s good to hear from you—are you feeling better? I hope you’re getting plenty of rest. I’ve been meaning to send something over, but I’m not sure what the done thing is these days. Fruit baskets seem a little out of vogue.” His voice is warm and concerned but not at all surprised, and Alex frowns in confusion, rubs fingers across his forehead as he tries to recall whether he’d spoken to Washington without remembering.

“So you don’t think I’m dead,” Alex states. Washington chuckles.

“I was fairly sure, son.”

“Did I call? I don’t remember calling.” Then again, there a big, fever-edged hole in his memory that could be filled with absolute anything.

“Your assistant let me know,” Washington informs him.

“My assistant?” Alex repeats, perplexed. “How did _he_ know?”

“You don’t remember any of this? You _must_ have been badly off. You called him; he’s the one who drove you to hospital.”

“Huh.” It makes sense; he got here _somehow_ , and he remembers making a phone call. The fact that the only person he could think to call was his assistant is a sad reflection on his life in general and does nothing to improve his mood. “Well, anyway—I can be back at work in like, three days. Probably. Sooner if I can escape the nurses—”

“—son,” Washington says in a warning tone, right as John reappears at the door and says “I’d like to see you try.”

Alex wrinkles his nose up at John.

“I don’t want to see you back in this office for a week at least,” Washington says over the line, and Alexander’s expression shifts to something appalled.

“But, sir—”

“No arguments. Your team are perfectly capable of covering your absence for a week or two, Alexander.”

“ _Two_ ,” Alexander repeats in a horrified voice. The idea of two weeks away from his work makes him squirm uncomfortably; there’s so much to do, and every day he’s here is another day he’s falling behind. As soon as he’s home he can work from there, at least; Washington can keep him from the office but he can’t keep him from his emails. It’s probably against his civil rights, or something.

“You heard me,” Washington says, and his tone is pleasant, but firm, brooks no argument. “Feel better, Alexander. How do you feel about flowers?”

“Hah,” Alex mutters. “I’d prefer donuts.”

Washington laughs, tells him one last time to get better, and rings off. Alex stares mournfully at the phone, and then holds it out to John.

“Thanks,” he says, glumly.

“That your boss?” John asks.

“Forbidding me to come back to work, yeah,” Alex confirms. He falls back against his pillows with a huff, regrets it when it triggers another short-lived coughing fit. John waits patiently for it to pass, doesn’t move in to help him this time.

“I like him,” John says, cheerfully.

“I’m gonna fight him,” Alex says, without much conviction. John laughs—even free of his fever, Alex once more gets that flash of summer-slow nostalgia at the sound—and perches on the end of the bed.

“There anyone you don’t want to fight?” he asks. Alex thinks for a moment.

“No. I have my reasons to want to fight pretty much everyone.”

“Write me a list,” John suggests, tapping his fingers on the notepad. “I want to know just how petty you can be.” And then he stands, pulls the blanket a little further up for Alex, and turns to go.

“It’s gonna be a long-ass list,” Alex warns. John doesn’t look surprised, only hooks a smile across his lips and slings it carelessly over his shoulder.

“I don’t doubt it.”

And then he’s gone. Alex looks at the pad of paper, and thinks that he’s got more important things to do than waste his time writing a list of everyone he has legitimate reason to fight. There are articles he was halfway through and more to arrange, interviews to transcribe, and at least two days of news for him to catch up on.

He pulls the pad towards him, uncaps his pen, and begins to write.

Over the course of the day, he writes page after page—messy lists that he doesn’t think much about. When he tires, he scribbles in the margins instead, formless doodles made of circles and interconnected lines, or he flips through the book of puzzles. He sleeps, on and off, eats lunch with a voracious appetite that can only be a good sign, and he goes back to writing.

John stops by in the afternoon to take his vitals again, and remarks that he’s looking better.

“But don’t take that as permission to get out of here,” he says, sternly. “I don’t think you realise how bad you were when you came in. You need rest.”

“I can rest at home,” Alex grumbles.

“You _can_ ,” John agrees. “Not sure you _would._ ” Alex has nothing to say to that which won’t incriminate him further. Maintaining eye contact with John, he pulls the pad of paper towards him, and turns to a blank page, writes _JOHN_ in block capitals across the top. That earns him another laugh.

“I’ll leave you to it,” John says, and disappears off once more.

He suffers through a stern talk from a doctor about looking after himself, is told that he might feel tired for a month or more as he recovers.

“I’m always tired,” he says. “No change there. Isn’t tiredness just the default state of adult life?”

That earns him a defeated look, and he’s forced to bite his tongue before he presses to know how long they’re keeping him here, doesn’t mention that the reason he’s so keen to get out is so that he can go right back to his work, to the punishing schedule that had helped land him here in the first place.

“I’d like to keep you in another day,” the doctor says. “I need to see a more positive response to the medication before I let you go. Another couple of days and you could have been dead, young man.”

When the doctor leaves, Alex adds another page to his list.

_Doctor Shah_

  * _Patronising as hell_
  * _Not that much older than me but called me young man??_
  * _The incorruptible warden of the hospital gates who keeps me here against my will_



Alex thinks it's late when John stops by, though it's hard to tell in the unchanging fluorescent atmosphere of the hospital lights. John has his hoodie on over his scrubs again, the laces on his sneakers lying loose and untied. He looks tired, ashy grey smudges beneath his eyes betraying a long shift, maybe a double. He looks like he'd like nothing more than to drag himself home and sleep. Instead, he drops his bag on the floor by Alex's bed and settles in on the end.

"Feels pretty unfair that you've been telling me to work less and you're clearly dead on your feet," Alex mutters. 

"Never worked myself into a hospital bed," he points out, and Alex can't fault him that. John holds out his hand and Alex looks blankly at it for a minute before he realises he's reaching for the pad of paper. He passes it over and John flips through the pages idly, stopping every so often to read a page more closely.

"You want to fight your friend Lafayette because your boss likes him more than you?" He reads, and raises an eyebrow at Alex.

"I had to threaten to quit before Washington gave me my own editorial position," Alex confirms. "I mean, it's not like I didn't deserve it, you know? It's just that I made such a good assistant that he wouldn't let me go."

"Kind of sounds like you should want to fight your boss about that, not your friend."

Alex waves a hand. "You'd understand if you met him. He's French. And very tall. And just so _charming,_ ugh, and he buys the most thoughtful gifts. He can make anyone like him."

John is staring at him, and his expression suggest he might be biting the inside of his cheek, possibly to hold back his laughter. He turns a few more pages. 

"Thomas Jefferson," he reads out loud. Alex grimaces, and his hands do actually clench into frustrated fists. John turns the pad back towards him so he can see the page. "There's only one thing listed under Thomas Jefferson and it's 'Thomas Jefferson'."

"I didn't have enough paper to write out the full list, and you don't have time to read it."

Another few pages are flipped through, John glancing up at Alex with a grin as he continues to page through the rather extensive list. He laughs out loud at Doctor Shah's page. Flips again a few more idle times and then stops to read one, expression inscrutable, before finally closing it and handing it back.

"So you want to fight people that you really like, people that you really hate, and everyone in between?" John clarifies. Alex shrugs, nods his head in confirmation. "The only person not on there is yourself."

"A grievous oversight. I'll kick anyone's ass. I'll kick your ass, I'll kick your dog's ass, I'll kick my own ass. But probably intellectually instead of physically because I'm, you know." Alex gestures go his own slight frame. John snorts, a laugh far less beautiful but no less charming than his summer-sweet chuckles. "I bet you'd fight a guy," Alexander muses.

John moves a shoulder in a non-answer. "Maybe when I was much younger and much angrier," he agrees. "These days I'm more about the whole healing thing. Do no harm, etcetera."

"But you still would if it came to it," Alex presses, keenly hoping that he hasn't misread the same determined passion in John that he feels simmering in himself, always. Regardless of its focus, he knows it must spark and flare, sometimes.

"If it really mattered," John admits after a brief hesitation. Alex grins smugly.

"I knew it."

"For the record, that was not an invitation to fight." John says with amusement.

"Coward," Alex says. "How many times do I need to demand you fight me before you comply?"

John checks his watch, and reaches down for his bag, slings it up onto his shoulder and holds it there with one hand as he stands.

"At least once more, I guess," he says. "So I'll see you tomorrow."

"Your last chance," Alex warns him a little smugly. "The inimitable Doctor Shah promised I could go home tomorrow."

"Promised?" John asks, eyebrow raised.

"Fine. Implied, dependent on my continued improvement."

"Thought so. Get some sleep, don't fight anyone, and _maybe_ you'll be home this time tomorrow."

John leaves, lifting his hand in a wave as he pulls the door closed behind him. Alex responds in kind, wiggling his fingers until John's outline disappears from view. He flops back against his pillows, sighs broadly into the silence. He's slept more in the past few days than in the preceding week altogether. Though tired, the thought of sleeping again bores him, makes him tired in a whole other, indefinable way that won't be fixed with a nap.

Flipping through the notepad, he considers writing out a tragi-comic account of his rivalry with Jefferson to make John laugh tomorrow. Rifling through the pages to find where his notes finish, he hesitates at the page with John's name scrawled across the top, messy where he'd been looking John in the eye rather than at the paper. 

There's points scribbled underneath that he doesn't remember writing; he wonders if this is the page John had read with hidden interest.

_JOHN_

  * _Interrupted my peace and quiet (twice) just to 'take my vitals'_
  * _Unapologetically right about stuff (this is my thing)_
  * _Freckles (too cute)_
  * _Won't fight me!!_



He feels the heat of embarrassment creep up onto his cheeks at the thought that John might have seen it. He had noticed the freckles, obviously, which in combination with that laugh and those curls and the patient amusement in his brown-green eyes probably made him the cutest medical professional that Alex had ever come across. He'd been planning on keeping that to himself, though.

He stares at the page for a little longer before he closes the pad, any intention of writing more now forgotten. A nurse comes in to take his vitals before he sleeps. She's a petite Filipino woman, and she's got a happy smile and a bounce in her step. But she's brisk and she doesn't linger, and Alex is left with a distinct dissatisfaction over the whole affair.

Come morning, he's restless and irritable. He's been cooped up in a bed for too long, and the brief wanderings to the bathroom and along the corridors aren't enough to drive the nervous energy from his limbs. He wants a real coffee, he wants fresh air, he wants to sit in front of his laptop, or maybe pace back and forth across his kitchen in his bare feet, hands sketching gestures through the air as he dictates.

He tells all this to John when he arrives and hooks Alex's chart from the end of his bed.

"Chill out," John advises. "I'd say Doctor Shah will release you just as soon as she makes it around."

"If she doesn't, I'll—"

"—Fight her?" John quirks a smile and replaces the chart. He's wearing a hoodie again this morning, a faded University College London crest adorning the chest. Alexander tries to imagine John as a student in London, and gets stuck immediately because he's never been there. Alex figures his shift hasn't actually started yet. He takes a moment to feel smugly special for the attention.

"Have you fight her," Alex corrects, around a cough that sounds fractionally less wet than three days ago. "You're healthy and hale. Stand a better chance."

John disappears off to scrub up and do whatever it is he does when he's not humouring Alex. Alex fidgets and grumbles his way impatiently through the next fifteen minutes, and lights up when Doctor Shah finally makes it in. He represses the urge to cough.

"Lay it on me, doc," he says, brightly. She fixes him with a stern look and provides a lecture on finishing his course of antibiotics, getting enough rest, and not working himself into a state where he doesn't realise he's days from death. He nods dutifully and solemnly, and breaks out in a wide grin when she scribbles her signature on his discharge papers.

His clothes are in a plastic bag in the side table; he pulls them on and wishes he had a clean set, or at least the chance to shower. Figures he can do all that when he gets home, right before he hits his inbox real hard and reminds everyone that just because he's got a stupid cough doesn't mean he's out of the game. No doubt Jefferson has been lording himself around the office with glee. Alex can't let that stand. He's trying his laces and mentally drafting a _cutting_ email when he hears a tap on the door and looks up to see John, grinning at him from the doorway.

"You're still in jeans," Alex observed, a little stupidly.

"Yeah. I'm not actually working today," John admits, a little embarrassed. Alex blinks at him, straightening up.

"Oh," he says. "Then why are you here?"

"Figured you'd be causing trouble. Seemed sensible to nudge Doctor Shah in your direction sooner rather than later, before you started fighting people." Alex's face breaks out into a grin at that, ruined only by the faint cough that trips up his throat after it. And then John steps forward and offers something up, and Alex notices for the first time that he's got a Dunkin’ takeaway cup in one hand. Alexander could cry.

"Anyone ever tell you that you're one hell of a nurse?" Alex asks, pops the lid off the coffee just to inhale a deep breath of coffee-smell. Another summery laugh. 

"Do me a favour, don't ignore _all_ the doctor's advice?" John asks. And then he folds the sleeves of his hoodie over his thumbs, just the barest touch of awkwardness. "See you around then, Alex. Hopefully not in here."

"Where else would I see you?" Alex asks, and it's only half rhetorical. John only glances at the coffee in Alex's hand, offers up a jaunty wave, and disappears. Alex watches him go with a faint crease of confusion between his brow, and lets himself cradle a little regret in his chest. He hates being sick, hates doctors, hates hospitals, but John? John, he could miss. 

He sets down the coffee to pull on his sweater. His finds his wallet in his pocket, which is a stroke of luck considering that his only option for getting back home is a cab. Calling his assistant from a hospital phone and asking for another ride is too embarrassing to even consider. He reaches out for the coffee again and sees thick black marker on the side. Idly, he swivels the cup, expecting to see John's name. Instead, in neat, blocky caps: _FIGHT ME?_

There's a number scrawled beneath the words. Alex's laugh is giddy, until it turns into a cough. He considers hurrying after John, catching up to him before he disappears. Then he thinks again about a shower, about clean clothes, about his own apartment, and decides against it. Instead, he clutches the cup reverently to his chest as he waits at the hospital entrance for his cab, grinning like an idiot at it every time he lifts it to take a sip.

He gets home and finds his phone lying on his desk where he presumably left it, completely dead. He plugs it in and waits impatiently for it to build enough charge to turn on. As soon as it powers up, notifications begin flooding in—emails and texts and a dozen messages from Lafayette demanding that he call. He shoots him a quick message to assure him that he's alive and he'll call later, and casts a quick eye over everything else before he decides, uncharacteristically, that it can all wait a few hours more.

When he eventually calls John, it's almost three hours later. His freshly washed hair is licking at his neck and shoulders, kissing damp spots onto the faded grey of his t-shirt. He feels glorious, aside from the lingering tiredness and the fact that the steam in the shower had made him cough so hard he got dizzy.

"Hello?" John's voice is instantly recognisable, even over the phone.

"So I made it home," Alex says, and John's laugh is a little muffled through the phone, but it sounds right into Alex's ear, so it feels like a fair trade-off.

"You still there?" John asks, "Kind of thought you'd be waiting for me in the nearest Denny's parking lot."

"About that. I thought instead of fighting you, we could just fight other people. You know, together." He’s standing in front of his fridge, and he opens it idly. His fridge, not well-tended at the best of times, is looking particularly sad after his unexpected three or four day absence. He grimaces.

"Oh, so you want a sidekick?" John asks. Alex doesn't hear any background noise on the line, and wonders if John is at home too. Wonders how close he lives, imagines him standing in front of his own fridge, a mirror of Alex. But with his shirt off, because it's Alex's imagination and he can do what he likes with it.

"You kidding? I'm the sidekick. You'll beat people up, I'll add a scathing commentary."

"I was kind of thinking dinner," John says, like he can read Alex's mind, or perhaps has guessed that Alex wouldn't have thought far enough ahead to remember to pick up groceries on the way home. "But maybe we can find someone to fight on the way back."

"Fuel up first? I like the way you think. Gotta work every advantage."

"You're ridiculous," John says, and Alex can hear the smile in his voice, hidden behind the feigned exasperation. "How do you feel about tonight? We can raincheck if you're tired."

"Tonight is perfect," Alex says, and closes his fridge. "Name the Denny's parking lot. I'll be there."


End file.
